Agriculture Industry and Farm Business

What the agriculture industry includes

When people talk about the agriculture industry, they usually mean more than farms. The farm industry itself grows crops and raises livestock. Around it sits everything that supplies it (seed, fertilizer, machinery, credit, insurance, software) and everything that moves its output to people: grain handling, processing, food manufacturing, wholesale, retail and restaurants. Statistics agencies often report “agriculture” and “agriculture, food and related industries” as two separate numbers, and the gap between them is large.

In the United States, the USDA’s Economic Research Service puts the contribution of agriculture, food and related industries at about $1.537 trillion in 2023, or 5.5 percent of GDP. The output of farms alone was $222.3 billion, about 0.8 percent of GDP. Most of the value is added after the crop leaves the field, which is why farm prices and food prices don’t move in step.

US farms by the numbers

The USDA’s Farms and Land in Farms 2025 Summary (February 2026) counts about 1.865 million farms in the US, 15,000 fewer than in 2024, on 873.95 million acres. The average farm grew to 469 acres, from 466. Texas has the most farms by far, at 229,000.

Averages hide how uneven the farming industry is. Farms with less than $100,000 in sales make up 78.8 percent of all farms but operate only 25.7 percent of the land, and the only sales class that added land in 2025 was farms selling $1 million or more. In practice, most food comes from a minority of large commercial operations, while most farms are small, often run alongside another job. One caveat from the USDA: it skipped its June area survey in 2025 and used a statistical model instead, so compare with earlier years carefully.

For a longer view of where US crop farming is heading, read our piece on agriculture trends in US crop farming.

Hot topics in agriculture

Ask farmers, lenders or ag economists what’s on their minds and the same subjects keep coming up.

Weather, water and soil

Drought, floods and heat are hitting yields more often, and groundwater limits are tightening in places that rely on irrigation. That’s pushing interest in soil health, cover crops, better irrigation scheduling and crop insurance. Our overview of issues in agriculture covers the main ones with US figures.

Costs, prices and trade

Fertilizer, fuel, machinery and interest costs rose faster than many crop prices in recent years, squeezing margins. Tariffs and trade disputes add another layer of uncertainty for exporters of soybeans, grains, nuts and meat. Our farm finance guides collect the reading on loans, subsidies and tariffs.

Labor and technology

Many farms struggle to find seasonal and skilled workers, which is one reason precision tools are spreading: auto-steer, variable-rate application, drones and satellite field data that shows which part of a field needs attention before anyone walks it. Food companies are also asking for more proof of where crops came from, driven by rules such as the EU Deforestation Regulation.

Running a farm as a business

Profitable farms tend to know their numbers at the enterprise level: what it costs to grow an acre of each crop or keep each animal, broken down into seed, fertilizer, chemicals, fuel, labor, machinery, land and interest, and what yield and price they need to break even. University extension services publish enterprise budgets that make a good template.

From there, the business questions are about risk and markets. Who are you selling to, and can you sign forward contracts? Which crop insurance and price protection fit your farm? Would a second enterprise, such as direct sales, agritourism or custom work, use spare labor and equipment? Our list of agri business ideas is a starting point, and the hub also has articles on fencing costs and farm apps for the record-keeping side. If you’re looking at agriculture from the investor side, start with how to invest in agriculture, which explains the main routes and their risks; it’s background reading, not advice.

How farming differs by country

The farming industry looks very different from one country to the next. In much of Africa and Southeast Asia, most farms are a few acres, worked by family labor and sold through local traders, and the big constraints are credit, storage and roads. In the Netherlands, greenhouses and tight supply chains make a small country one of the world’s largest food exporters, and Israel built much of its farming on drip irrigation and treated wastewater. The country profiles in this hub, including agriculture in the Netherlands and agriculture in Israel, show how climate, land and policy shape what’s possible.